


To Flay Our Minds

by rabbit_hearted



Category: Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: BANGS FISTS ON TABLE, F/M, WE WANT HEALING DAMNIT, and unsurprisingly a massive unabashed simp, cute flower shop au, guys they didnt even want to fight in this one, i cant imagine him in anything else when i write modern AUs, im also always putting him in band t shirts, its the healing of it all, kieran is a dork, soffffttttt, they just wanted to make out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:02:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26990350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbit_hearted/pseuds/rabbit_hearted
Summary: Kieran has just finished arranging a pot of gloxinias when he spots her hovering hesitantly at the cusp of the shop, one foot still planted firmly on the welcome doormat.She's impossibly pretty, he thinks, to look so sad.For the Lauki Week prompt: Flower Shop
Relationships: Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White
Comments: 22
Kudos: 86





	To Flay Our Minds

_“Decorated by men and time_

_Ornamental and quite divine_

_Manifested in their commitment_

_To flay our minds_ _—_

_You are the answer to my question.”_

_-Q &A, Kishi Bashi _

* * *

  
  


Kieran has just finished arranging a pot of gloxinias when he spots her hovering hesitantly at the cusp of the shop, one foot still planted firmly on the welcome doormat. 

He places his shears down on the counter and leans back on his stool, appraising the shop objectively. He supposes it _is_ rather overwhelming, lacking all of the uniformity of some of the glossier shops he’s seen downtown in the financial district. Every surface bursts with greenery, a patchwork quilt of spindly vines and asymmetrical clay pots he’d sourced from local artisans. An overgrown ivy plant yawns from one end of the exposed ceiling to the other, filtering the sunlight through its gauzy leaves in shifting, ephemeral shapes.

A local newspaper had described the store as having a “pleasant cacophony”, a term that Kieran found so endearing he’d saved the clipping and taped it to the inside of the cash register. 

“I promise the flowers aren’t poisonous,” he offers amicably. “Most of them, at least.” 

The girl blinks, turning away from an orchid as though noticing him for the first time. “Oh. Right.” Her gaze is brilliant, fossilized amber, sharp and transparent. She’s impossibly pretty, he thinks, to look so sad. 

A silence blooms between them, neither comfortable nor explicitly awkward. “Do you, uh-”

“I don’t know anything about flowers,” she blurts. Her cheeks pinken with the admission. 

“Well,” Kieran says, “You’re in luck.” He crosses the length of the room and comes to a stop beside her, his hands burrowed in his pockets in a posture he hopes comes across as unassuming. He isn’t sure why it suddenly feels so important to him that she’s comfortable here, but it does. “As it turns out, I do happen to know quite a bit about flowers.” 

She smiles hesitantly, then, a little flicker that softens the sharpness of her portrait. “Do you?” 

“For example, that orchid you’re standing next derives from the Greek word _orchis,_ meaning testicles.” 

He delivers the explanation clinically, only betraying a hint of a smirk when she whirls on him, her eyes comically widened. “Are you serious?” 

“Yep. That’s why they’re often viewed as a harbinger of fertility.” 

“Okay,” she drawls, venturing further into the shop. “Got anything less phallic?” 

“Sure. What’s your favorite flower?” 

Her features fold into contemplation as she considers the question. “Daisies,” she murmurs after a length. 

“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you didn’t say roses. Roses are lovely, sure,” he says, disappearing down a winding path and further into the thicket of foliage, the belly of the store. He realizes, then, that he’s forgotten to ask her to follow and feels gratified when he hears her hesitant steps behind him, some twenty yards behind. 

“But I can’t tell you how many damn _rose bouquets_ I’ve done in the past few weeks. They’re practically imprinted behind my eyelids. _Oh!_ — Here’s that hose I was looking for.” He bends to retrieve the end of a rubber tube and pushes it out of the way of the path. “I’ve got to make sure to water the rhododendrons with the _yellow_ hose, not the green one. The water pressure has been weird for, like, a week, and…” 

Kieran trails off and then turns, chagrined. He’s not sure what he expects to see in her face, but it’s not the bemused grin that she’s giving him, as though trying to decipher something in his expression. She looks like a still life, bordered on either side by all of the gentle, prismatic light, the ticking rainfall of the irrigation system. 

“Sorry,” he offers sheepishly. “Sometimes I get a bit-”

“It’s okay,” she supplies quickly. “I think it’s sweet.”

He exhales, suddenly too aware of his stained _Pink Floyd_ t- shirt, too aware of his rumpled, sleep-mussed hair and stained palms. “I’m Kieran,” he says. 

“Lauren. And please, don’t apologize. What you do is really …” her gaze follows the curving path of a fig leaf before returning to meet his own. “It’s really incredible.”

The tips of his ears flame with heat. Desperate to avoid further embarrassment, he returns his attention to the squat row of pots before them. “Daisies,” he says, lifting one of the smaller pots out of the groove of the wooden shelf, “Symbolize youth. Innocence.” 

Her expression grows taut and unreadable as she examines the milky petals. “Do they?” She mumbles. 

“They’re often overlooked, you know, being that they’re so simple. But I find them understated.” He glances at her. “Is there a reason they’re your favorite?”

“They … remind me of someone,” she replies. “Someone I knew when I was little. I guess it’s fitting, then, given their meaning.” 

He returns the pot to its place. “They’re resilient, too,” he offers quietly. “They can grow most anywhere, given there’s enough sunlight. And they come back, year after year. You might not be able to tell just from looking at them, but they’re incredibly strong.” 

“Thanks,” she replies, blinking. “I never knew that.”

“Well!” He tosses his arms out to his sides, pivoting on the balls of his feet in a show of grandeur. “There’s more where that came from.”

Lauren paces further down the path with her palms clasped behind her back. The aisle is narrow and vague here, the greenery thick enough that it almost offers the illusion of standing in the middle of a rainforest. 

“Do you own the store?” 

“Yep. This used to be a butcher’s shop, way back when. I renovated it myself.” 

“Wow.” She glances over her shoulder with admiration in her features. “You’re pretty young to be a business owner. How’d you manage that?” 

_Lived off of table scraps and pocket change,_ he thinks, but does not say. _Scrimped and saved and performed odd jobs for cash. Slept in my car and on park benches and unfamiliar couches, and still, still, it was worth it to own just a corner of something unequivocally my own._ “It was hard,” he replies vaguely. “But worth it. This is all I’ve ever wanted to do.” 

She nods knowingly. “I understand the feeling.” 

“What do you do?”

“I’m a det-” She pauses, drawing a breath through her teeth. “Police officer. Eleventh precinct. What are these ones called?”

He follows the direction of her pointer finger to a purple cluster of blossoms. “Ah. Those are hyacinths. There are around forty species, though I find I prefer the purple ones. Do you know what they symbolize?”

“They were the symbol of the royal family,” she replies. “Back when Ardhalis was governed by a monarchy.”

He hums affirmatively. “They also symbolize sorrow. I like the idea of an apology bouquet, though I don’t do them very often.” 

“Why?”

“It’s very human, I think. And there’s something sort of antiquated about sending a bouquet when a text or phone call could do the same thing.” He shrugs, sheepish. “But I guess I’m biased.” 

Foot traffic has been slow enough that he doesn’t expect anyone to come in, so they spend the next few minutes drifting through the aisles in companionable silence, interrupted only by his occasional classification when something catches her attention. 

“I completely forgot to ask you what you’re looking for,” he says.

“Oh. Right.” Lauren clears her throat, glancing at the front door. She looks so skittish that for a moment, he wonders if she’s going to bolt. “They’re actually for my parents.” 

He turns to study her expression more closely. “Oh. Any specific occasion?”

“No. I always bring them flowers when I visit.”

“They must love that. Do they live nearby?”

Lauren pulls her lip between her teeth. “No, they’re not far.” When she glances back at him, her mouth is fixed into an impassive suggestion of grin, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “So, what do you recommend?” 

“Well, myrtles represent familial love. They’re not in season, but I should have one or two in the back…” He trails off, drumming his fingers against his thigh. “Actually, I’ll be right back."

The air in the storage room is thickly humid, buzzing with the noise of a dozen fluorescent lamps. He doesn’t usually sell this stock to customers — the flowers he keeps here are younger, or just out of season, requiring a little extra care before they’re ready to be moved. But something tells him that he’ll find what she’s looking for, and so he ventures further into the stacks, his thumb trailing over the rows of pots— marigolds and lilies and gardenias that are all lovely, to be sure, but not exactly _right_. 

At last, when he’s nearly given up, he finds it tucked next to a foxglove. Kieran emerges with the plant balanced gingerly in the crook of his arm.

“These will do the trick,” he says, trimming the stems and then transferring them to wax paper. She watches him as he works, all sharp, nimble movements and reverent focus. When she leans forward to take a peek, he clicks his tongue in gentle admonishment. 

“Why won’t you let me see them? What if I don’t like them?”

He huffs, tossing her a bemused smirk. “You’ll like them, Officer. I’ll stake my professional reputation on it.” 

“Quite a stake.” Her fingers close gently around the bouquet when he hands it to her, and there’s something in the way that she holds the thing he cultivated, as soft in her hands as running water. She folds back the edge of the wax paper, peering in at the powdery, sword-like blossoms. “They’re beautiful. What do I owe you?”

“It’s on the house.”

She opens her mouth to protest, but he cuts her off with a flourish of his wrist. “I’m running a special for new customers. The first bouquet is free, but you have to come back. Otherwise,” he adds cheekily, “I’ll be forced to assume you took advantage of my kindness.” 

“I’ll be back,” she says, tucking the bouquet into her purse. “Thank you.” 

“Much obliged.”

Lauren grins, twitching her fingers over her shoulder in a wave. After she disappears down the sidewalk, he cleans the stems off of the countertop and notices, for the first time, that one of the flowers fell out in the transfer. 

Kieran twists it between his fingers, the petals pale enough that they appear nearly translucent in the overhead light. 

Gladioluses. 

The flowers of remembrance. 

  
  
  


He’s scrawling a note to his landlord when he meets her next. It’s raining so hard that the window panes rattle in the blustery wind, and the shop is always slow when the weather is poor, so he doesn’t even notice her enter until she’s nearly in front of him. 

“How did you know?” She sputters. She has a raincoat, but she holds it over her left arm, inexplicably, as though she’d left the house in a hurry and forgot to put it on. 

Kieran jumps, regarding her with confusion. “I’m sorry?” 

“The flowers,” Lauren pants, resting her palms against the edge of the countertop. “The ones you gave me last week. _God,_ it really is freezing outside.” 

He places his pen down between the spine of his notebook. “I think you should probably sit down.” 

“I’m fine.”

“You’re shivering.” He hitches his thumb towards the ceiling. “My flat is just upstairs. I’m not trying to come on to you, and I’m also not a serial killer. But I suspect this conversation is best had when you’re not semi-hypothermic.” 

Lauren glances around the store, then back to him. “The shop-”

“Has been slow,” he replies. “All of the _sane people_ ,” he adds pointedly, “Decided to stay inside today. I was already planning on closing early.” 

She scoffs haughtily, which doesn’t quite achieve its intended effect, being that she resembles a drowned rat at the present moment. “I’m sane. Usually.” 

Five minutes later, she’s sitting on his sofa with one of his throw blankets draped around her shoulders, which shouldn’t do anything for him, really, being that he’s simply being a _good Samaritan,_ and yet —

And yet, his hands twitch when he hands her a steaming mug of tea and she grins up at him, and it’s the most sensible thing in the world.

“Thank you.”

“So,” he says, dropping into the armchair opposite her. “What brings you to my apartment looking like you’ve just taken a dip in the river?” 

Lauren places her mug on the end table and twists a loose thread in her sweater. Her gaze —razor sharp and inquisitive, the kind of look that betrayed her profession before she’d even told him — drifts over the band posters he’d fixed to his walls, the stuffed bookshelf, the cluttered coffee table. He wishes, fruitlessly, that he’d had half a mind to tidy up this morning, but there’s no judgement in her expression, only roving, placid curiosity. “That bouquet you gave me. The gladioluses. Why did you choose them, specifically?”

“Ah,” Kieran murmurs, tilting his head. “That’s what this is about.” 

“I looked them up after I left the shop.” She leans forward on her elbows, fixing him with a scrutinizing look. “They’re mourning flowers. How could you have known?” She sucks in a sharp breath. “I never told you that they died.” 

He runs his palm over his jaw. “I didn’t. It was… an educated guess.” 

Lauren drops her gaze to her palms. “God, I must look _pathetic,_ barging in like this-”

“You are not pathetic,” he says, his words sharp and clipped. “Please,” he adds, softer. “Don’t think for a second that your grief makes you pathetic.” 

They lapse into quiet, the distant ticking of a grandfather clock and the pattering rainfall filling the pause in the conversation. 

“I was raised in the foster system. Bounced around between a few families and then left when I turned eighteen.” He leans forward to straighten a stack of drawings on the coffee table, more to give his hands something to do than anything else. “I remember a social worker telling me that as soon as I stepped out the door, I’d be on my own.” Kieran looks up and her attention on him is scorching, absolute. “I never looked back. That day in the shop, you just looked …” He draws in a breath. “Sad. Lonely, maybe. And I guess I recognized that. I’m probably not explaining myself very well-”

“No,” Lauren murmurs. “I get it.” 

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t.”

“But-”

“Kieran,” Lauren says firmly. “I’m trained in firearms. And I promise you that if you apologize to me one more time without actually _doing anything wrong_ , I will shoot you.” She leans forward and retrieves her tea from the table, smiling wanly. “To maim, not to kill.” 

“Well, that makes it so much better.”

“It’s pretty hard to shoot to _intentionally_ maim, you know. But I’d manage it, just for you.”

He scoffs, but he’s desperately relieved to see her smile, and the realization is so poignant that he nearly feels breathless. “Thanks, Officer.” 

  
  
  


A week later, he sends a bouquet of daisies to the eleventh precinct. He might have chosen one of the flashier, more expensive displays, but something tells him that she’d far prefer the simple brown paper and twine that he eventually settles on. He scrawls a note on cardstock:

_This isn’t an apology._

  
  
  


They meet next on a Saturday, an unseasonably warm day in winter. He’d been waiting for her to come by all week, and when she finally does, her entrance is announced with yolky, early morning sunlight and a _The Doors_ album he’d put on the record player. She’s wearing a yellow blouse and her hair is twisted into a knot at the base of her neck, and she looks so pretty it feels nearly impossible. 

She stalks up to the front counter with her hands planted on her hips, all sure-footed conviction. “I’m here to hold up my end of the bargain.”

Kieran sits back, grinning. He’s presently submerged to his wrists in a bonsai plant, but then, he supposes she should be used to it by now. “I was just doing some repotting,” he explains sheepishly. “I didn’t hear you come in. What bargain?”

“The special you mentioned?” Lauren tilts her head. “First bouquet is free, as long as you come back.” 

It takes Kieran an embarrassingly long time to piece together the fact that she’s referring to the fictional special he’d invented the first time she’d been in the store. After a moment’s hesitation, he manages to smooth his features into recollection. “Oh, right. The special.”

For a moment, Lauren appraises him with faint, unsmiling amusement, one brow cocked into her hairline. “Uh huh," she says skeptically. 

“The special that definitely exists,” Kieran adds.

She huffs, tilting her chin up towards the ceiling. “Yeah, that’s the one.” 

“Well, then. What piques your interest? More daisies?”

Lauren hums noncommittally. “No. I actually just received the most beautiful bouquet of them, but the sender didn’t leave their name,” she murmurs, feigning wistfulness. “One might think I have a secret admirer.” 

“Cliché, if you ask me,” Kieran replies dryly. “Who sends flowers anymore?” 

“I don’t know,” she replies, examining a succulent display. “I thought it was kind of endearing. Like a smitten puppy.” 

“Smitten puppy,” he intones. 

She crosses her arms over her chest, smirking. “Yep.” 

He lets her explore the store on her own and returns to his work in comfortable quiet, the lulling constancy of his shears and the scratchy croon of the record player somehow speaking on behalf of them both. Finally, she comes to a slow stop in front of where he sits, still slouched over the bonsai, his brows pulled in in concentration. 

“What’d you find?” 

“Calla lilies.” 

Kieran glances up, then, a grin blooming across his face. She holds the plant in front of her, a single, milky blossom framed by a spotted leaf. 

“Fitting.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Calla lilies,” he says, “Represent beauty.” 

Her lips part in a breathless huff. “Sure, they do, Shakespeare.” 

“I solemnly swear, Officer Sinclair,” Kieran replies, placing his hand over his heart just a beat after he realizes that it’s still covered in soil. “That information comes directly from a floriography text from the eighteen hundreds. _The Language of Flowers._ ”

When she laughs, he realizes that it’s the first time he’s ever heard it — rushed and slightly breathless and impossibly magnetic, as though she’d been sparked from within by a live wire. “You know, you’re pretty suave for a guy covered in dirt.” 

Kieran chuckles, brushing his palms against his kneecaps. “Is that so?” He stands up and pushes his stool with his ankle. 

“How much is this one?” She asks, pushing the plant across the counter. 

He shrugs. “Call it an even twenty, if you insist.”

“I do.” She slides a bill onto the counter as he arranges the flowers into a nicer vase than the standard planter he’d used in the display. 

Before she leaves, he slips an earmarked copy of _The Language of Flowers_ into her bag. “There’s your proof,” he says. “I’m no Shakespeare.” 

“Nothing more than an imp with a green thumb, I fear,” Lauren replies, laughing. 

  
  


“I never thanked you.”

Lauren stops by the store after work most days, offering an extra pair of hands, or snarky criticisms of his “washed-up hipster music”, or simply the comforting assurance of her quiet presence. On this particular evening, long after the store has closed, they split containers of pad thai as Kieran frowns over a stack of bills he’d been waffling over for the past week.

Kieran punches a formula into his calculator. “What for?” 

“The gladioluses,” she replies. 

He hums absently, frowning over his ledger when the numbers fail to balance. “What on earth would you need to thank me for?”

Lauren leans over, scratching out one of Kieran’s calculations with a pencil. “You forgot to carry the nine. God, don’t you have an accountant? Here, let me see that.” 

He happily pushes the papers in her direction. “I manage, it just usually takes me a bit longer when I don’t have a _backseat driver_ hovering over my shoulder. And you’re avoiding the question.”

“This backseat driver just prevented you from writing down that you made three times less than what you actually did today.”

“Still avoiding.”

Lauren sighs, twisting the pencil between her forefinger and thumb. “I hadn’t really talked about it since it happened. And it just felt nice. And you didn’t have to tell me anything about your childhood — about the foster homes — but you did anyway. It meant a lot to me.” She turns to him, surprised to find the full force of his attention on her, as brilliant as a lightning strike. His sharp gaze scrolls over her own unwaveringly, his jaw working, as though debating something internally. When she speaks, her voice has lowered to a whisper, and she hasn’t the faintest idea why. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking.” 

He spends another moment watching her, and then he finally turns his gaze up to the ceiling. “I’m thinking,” he murmurs to the ivy plant, “That you have nothing to thank me for. And I’m also thinking that I’d like to kiss you.” 

“I’m thinking that I’d let you.” 

When he faces her again, her gaze is hooded and roving, absent of the shadows he recognized in her when they first met. Perhaps they were two points drifting across parallel paths, experiencing the same story, just in different iterations. Perhaps the circumstances that preceded them were catastrophic, but meant to happen all the same, if only for the purpose of nudging one into the other’s orbit. Perhaps they are a serendipity in the truest sense, their eventual collision creating something cosmic, unexpected, life-giving. 

And then he threads her fingers into her hair and slants his mouth over hers, and he puts the theory to the test. 

  
  
  


She finds the daisies in unexpected places.

Threaded behind her ear and pressed between pages of her paperwork, only to be found later, when she’s poring over an incident report at the precinct. Slipped into her bag and balanced on her windowsill when he leaves for work long before she’s woken up. They turn up like copper pennies, tucked into the little folds of their joined lives, and they bear many meanings: Wishes and musings and promises and, on the harder days, apologies. 

So it comes as a surprise when, on the anniversary of her parent’s passing, she rolls over to find a bundle of daffodil blossoms on her nightstand, spooled together with red twine. There’s a folded note tucked next to them:

_For them._

He’s already left her apartment for work, so she fishes the worn copy of _The Language of Flowers_ out from the kitchen drawer, her index finger tracing the annotated pages until she finds the entry she’s looking for. 

He picks up on the second ring, his voice warm through the receiver, still roughened with the remnants of sleep. “Good morning.” 

“Daffodils?” She taps the edge of the page with her thumb. “They represent misfortune. Pretty grim omen."

Kieran laughs. “No, _mon amour._ I gave you more than one, didn’t I?” 

Lauren pauses, leaning over to examine the text more closely. “What do you mean?”

There’s some shuffling on the other end, and then muffled conversation. “Sorry, I was helping a customer.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Lauren replies. “I’ll call you later-”

“I thought we agreed on not apologizing when it isn’t necessary. Look again.” 

She tilts the phone between her shoulder, thumbing back to the entry. “ _Daffodil, single,”_ she murmurs. “ _Misfortune, bad luck_. _Daffodil, bunch…”_ She blinks dazedly, rereading the line. 

“New beginnings,” he finishes. When there's a pause, he supplies, somewhat nervously, "In retrospect, it's probably corny." 

Lauren blows a breath through her teeth and glances at her reflection in the refrigerator, her gaze red-rimmed and widened, as though lengthening the aperture as far as it will go, as though committing the moment to memory. She brings her hand to her mouth and her reflection follows, considering, then, that perhaps they are like daffodils, growing in spite of misfortune, luckier together rather than apart. 

"Ren? Are you there?"

"Yes," she whispers, at length. “Pretty corny of you, Shakespeare."

And her voice cracks clean down the middle as she says it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!
> 
> One Lauki week prompt early, the other late - bit of an M.O. for me at this point, no? 
> 
> Writing this was the best kind of experience one can have as an author -- the kind where the characters tell you the story and you're just there to transcribe.
> 
> Also, Kieran being terrible at math is a personal head-canon of mine that I've been meaning to work into a story for some time. 
> 
> Also Pt. 2: Gloxinias (The flowers he's working with when they first meet) signify love at first sight, because your author is an unapologetic cornball. 
> 
> I love you all completely, fully, incandescently. 
> 
> -Rabbit


End file.
